My Views on stuff

A lot of students - and their parents - dream of getting into the medical profession. But, every dream has its hurdles. In India, there are much fewer medical colleges than demand.

And, scams follow - to con unsuspecting students and parents by promising them medical seats, sometimes at a very low price.

I shall talk today about how to get admission to medial colleges and not get scammed.

First, a few examples of the scam:

LOSING MONEY for seat

A racket in sale of medical and dental seats for sums ranging from Rs 75 lakh to Rs 90 lakh has been busted in Karnataka with the arrest of 11 persons belonging to two gangs, police said. The gang took the money but failed to arrange any seat.

One interesting thing that comes to notice from this news is that the cheaters were able to convince parents to give them such a big amount of money. Though, there is a provision for getting medical seats through the direct admission route, aspirants need to be careful about how to go about for it. NEVER give money to a random person who assures a medical seat. You may need a renowned educational consultancy to assist you in your dealings with a college and make you aware of all the legality involved. If someone promises something which is too good to be true, most likely it is.

too good to be true

Police in November claimed to have busted an inter-state gang involved in conning people into paying large sums of money for seats in medical colleges in Madhya Pardesh with the arrest of two persons from Kolkata. Police also recovered a demand draft of Rs 2.5 lakh given by the complainant.

This is a classic case where students and parents were cheated by being lured for a very cheap rate. Here, the cheaters offered an MBBS seat for Rs. 2.5 lakhs. A college normally charges much more more for seats under management quota. Times of India estimates that any Bangalore college charges at least Rs. 60 lakhs or more for a MBBS seat through direct admission. The difference of amount itself is staggering and any discrepancy should ideally warn the admission takers. What a college can charge or are allowed to charge is something that the government should look into.

non-transparent admission process

In a major scam in seat allocation for MBBS, BDS and post-graduate courses, deemed universities in the state haven't parted with seats for the government quota. In the past academic year alone, eight deemed universities didn't give 252 seats to the Common Entrance Test pool as mandated. An MBBS seat at current market rates would fetch an institute between Rs 60 lakh and Rs 70 lakh. A PG radiology seat is being sold for Rs 3 crore in some of the best institutes.

One of the biggest problem in getting admission is the non-transparent process. The above news shows how a college flouts all the rules just to maximize income by selling seats through the management quota. And, the rates charged by the colleges are very high. And, if a student gets admitted in one of the seats that was arranged bypassing the rules, he/she runs the chance of losing the seat if the government cancels the seat to correct a misdeed. So, the student loses the seat and the money.

corrupt ministers

A CBI court convicted Rajya Sabha member Rasheed Masood of fraudulently nominating undeserving candidates to Tripura’s share of MBBS seats outside the state from a central pool. Along with Masood, the court convicted two senior bureaucrats: Gurdial Singh, then resident commissioner at Delhi’s Tripura Bhavan, and Amal Kumar Roy, secretary to then Tripura chief minister Sudhir Ranjan Majumdar.

For MBBS admissions, the scamsters are polished and educated. They can claim high connections and also involved high-position people in the government, including ministers. Whoever you talk to, make sure, you have their pictures and verify their identities. If you try to use unscrupulous ways, the chances of your cheating increases proportionately.

how to get admitted without getting cheated

Route 1 - Try to get a MBBS seat through the entrance examination such as COMEDK. It is highly competitive but if you do get it, nothing like it. It's totally legal, the costs are much less and no headaches.

Route 2 - In case of not getting a seat through entrance examination, direct admission comes as a boon for a student, who really wants to become a doctor. As, you have read above that there are high chances of getting cheated, follow the following steps:

1> Make sure you have the proper budget. MBBS seats are expensive. Though, there is no accurate data from medical colleges about how much they charge for a MBBS seat, various newspapers have pegged the amount to more than Rs. 60 lakhs. Banks may not give education loans for more than Rs. 10 lakhs, so you have to arrange your own funds.

2> Select colleges you want to get into. Look for academic records, hospital facility and qualification of teachers. Recruit a reputed educational consultancy such as bangaloreadmission.com to help you in finding all the information, including MCI reports on colleges.

3> Make an agreement with the educational consultancy about their service charge. Check their reputation. If a consultant is reputable, one online search on Google should be able to reveal his/her picture.

4> Never pay any money to any individual. Insist to pay all fees to the college directly. Be aware of all hidden charges and insist on bills where possible.

5> College fix their own rates/fees. If any individual is discussing about fees and lowering/hiking rates and offer you rates which may even be lower than the cost of education incurred by a student who got the seat through examination, you are most likely dealing with a cheater.

Sisir Mukherjee

A self-styled career counsellor by profession for a reputed company based in Bangalore. Here to share information about Indian education structure, the hundreds of courses that a student can pursue and off course accurate information of the phenomenon called "Direct Admission" to private colleges.